by Anna Windsor
Blackmore gave her a questioning look, but Saul waved him off. “Voodoo stuff. They got attacked by a god the other night.”
“Oh. Right.” Blackmore didn’t seem to be able to take his eyes off Andy. “Karfour.”
“Kalfou,” Andy corrected, standing up straight again. “But you were close.”
She didn’t say she was impressed, but Camille could tell she was.
After Blackmore and Saul left, John came over to the weapons closet, but his eyes kept moving back to the front door. “Jack,” he said as Camille pulled out their cache of swords. “He’s—he seems a lot different than I remember. Did you give him a personality transplant while I wasn’t around?”
“Not really.” Camille lifted a blade and measured it against John’s stance. Too short. “Well, he spent a lot of time with the Mothers, so maybe that helped after all. I can’t put my finger on it, but he seems … better.”
Dio walked by on her way to the stairs. “I think it’s just that his demeanor doesn’t scream ‘arrogant asshole’ quite as loud as it did last year.”
Bela went in the other direction, heading for the kitchen, probably on her way downstairs to spend a little time in the lab she was now sharing with Camille to make some elementally treated bullets for John’s Glock. “What impresses me is that he was here for almost half an hour, and Andy didn’t try to drown him one single time.”
“Fuck all of you,” Andy said from her slightly pretzel-like yoga position beneath the Motherhouse Ireland mirror. “I may kill him yet. Just not today.”
Camille gave John a look and whispered her real interpretation of Blackmore’s visit. “Maybe there’s hope for the world after all.”
“I’ll buy that,” he whispered back, coming close enough that she wanted to touch him, and would have if she hadn’t been balancing three swords to measure against John’s height. “But let’s see what jackass new name and identity he tries to saddle me with before we go too far.”
( 17 )
She woke him the next morning, sitting on the edge of his bed, perched there like a delicate, tiny bird, just looking at him.
John thought he’d never experienced anything quite as sweet as opening his eyes to find Camille next to him in the bed, any bed, even if she hadn’t spent the night with him. The sight of her in her clingy white silk babydoll pajamas, gazing at him with those tropical blue-green eyes, made his blood rush. Her auburn hair looked wild and uncombed, a riot of dark red shades spilling over her shoulders and brushing her cream-colored cheeks. Her freckles seemed like the same shade of red-brown, and John wanted to touch each one, count each one, and memorize its location.
Her arm was … dusty.
He reached up and brushed grit off her elbow and gave her a questioning look.
“I’ve been practicing some stuff about dances and channels and the rock—never mind.” She wiped off her other elbow even though it wasn’t dusty. “Anyway, since we’re doing everything backward, I thought you should see me in the morning before I shower and get myself fixed up.” She pointed a slightly dusty finger at her hair. “Scary enough for you?”
John adjusted the sheets, aware of the feminine softness of the silk, and more than aware that Camille had slept in them before she loaned him her room. They smelled like her, like lilies and woman. He wanted more of that. More of everything.
“Come closer,” he told her, moving toward her just enough to get her attention. The huskiness in his voice was obvious to him, and he figured she noticed it, too. “Another few inches, and I’ll show you just how terrified I am.”
Her smile made him ache.
She didn’t move toward him, but he saw in her eyes that she wanted to.
That made him ache worse.
If he reached out, he’d be touching her. If she reached out, her hand would hit him midbelly, just above the sheet covering the fact he slept naked.
He had to shift his weight on the bed to make his erection less obvious.
Camille looked away from him at the pictures on her walls—buildings John assumed had to be the Motherhouses, drawn or painted by a pretty good artist.
“Why did you become a priest?” she asked.
The question brought him out of his desire-laden haze, though not completely, because the answer was easy enough. “I wanted to help people.”
He could have guessed her next question, but she asked it before he could do it for her. “Why did you give it up?”
“Same reason.” John wished she would look at him again, not so he could gauge her reaction and adjust his answers, but so he could see those eyes, see what she might be feeling about what he was saying. About him. “I couldn’t go after the demons with the church breathing down my neck. They had no problem with me being a military chaplain, but demon hunter probably wouldn’t have gone over well.”
Camille finished studying the pictures on her wall and gave him a fast, shy glance before she stared down at the tiny patch of cream-colored sheet between them. “Do you miss being with the church?”
“No.”
Her quick, twitching frown made him worry that she didn’t believe him, or that she thought he was being callous, so he tried to explain himself a little better. “Do I miss the peace and ceremony and prayer and the helping-people part? Yes, sometimes. But do I miss the demands and the restrictions and the limitations? No.”
Camille nodded. And waited.
Was she working up to another question about his time in the service of the church? If so, he had a good guess what this one might be, too—or at least what she needed to know.
“I’m not one of those angst-ridden ex-priests you read about in books or magazines, and I don’t get tempted to go back to that way of life. The way I see it, even though the circumstances sucked, I got a do-over about that choice, which is a good thing, because I made it when I was too young. Leaving the clergy was the right thing for me and the church, too. It was the right thing for everybody.”
Camille seemed to be listening to every word, and not just what he said but how he said it. She could probably read more into his answer than he could begin to guess, but that didn’t bother John. Whatever she needed to know or wanted to know, whatever she wanted from him, period, he’d give it to her.
She’s trying to weigh who I really am against who she thought I’d be, he realized. He wondered how he was faring in that equation.
She didn’t seem inclined to let him ask.
“I was born in Motherhouse Ireland,” she said, combing through all that long hair with her fingers. “My mother got killed when I was eight, and I sucked as an adept. Never developed the fire talents the Mothers wanted, and what I could do—pyrosentience—they thought was stupid. The mortar of my first fighting group took me on anyway, and I would have died to save her if I had the chance. The same for our air Sibyl, Bette. She got killed by an Asmodai in Van Cortlandt Park, and there was nothing I could do to save her, either. Losing them nearly drove me crazy. Maybe it did. I still haven’t decided.” She finished with her hair and pushed it behind her ears. “That’s what I have nightmares about. Asmodai. Fire Asmodai.”
Okay. So, this is what we’re doing now—I talk, then she talks. An exchange.
And it was his turn.
Fine.
He could do this.
“Only child, straight-A nerd in school, but too big for anybody to kick my ass over it. Duncan and I grew up in fields and woods, drinking Coke and eating Moon Pies. It went with the territory.” John watched Camille, alert for any sign of reaction, but she wasn’t judging or evaluating now. Just listening. “Duncan was like my brother, and he was the best, because most kids didn’t want anything to do with my family. We were Catholic, and in Georgia, Catholicism was something like Devil worship as far as most religions were concerned. Duncan lived with us the last few years we were in high school because his parents died. When he went to the University of Georgia, I headed for St. John Vianney College Seminary, in Miami. Then came the war, and Dunc
an and I joined up together. I have nightmares about stuff I saw in the war, and about the Valley of the Gods in the mountains near Kabul. That’s where a soldier I was with accidentally released the Rakshasa. What happened next—not pretty.”
Her soft, caring smile felt like a blessing. “There. Easy so far, right?”
“No.” John knew he was grinning back at her, and it made him feel like a teenager talking to the prettiest girl in school. “But doable.”
She stretched out her arm and touched his face, running four of her fingers along his jaw, then his chin. He felt the contact everywhere at once, and stayed completely bound by her eyes. “You’re used to doing everything alone, John.”
“You should talk.”
“Touché.” Camille smiled at him again, and John had to move his hand down to cover the tent in the silk sheet around his waist. He couldn’t stop his physical reaction to her, didn’t want to, but he didn’t want her to think that was everything. He didn’t want her to believe that all he was seeing was how she looked, or all he was imagining was how he wanted to touch her, and where, and for how long.
Every bit of that was happening—but this, this was so much more for him. He hadn’t imagined he could get this deep emotionally with any woman, much less before he ever got to make love to her.
“What do you think of me?” Camille murmured, as if she had heard every thought whirling through his mind.
John stared into those amazing eyes, wondering how it would feel to rock her underneath him, to see her gazing up at him with all the love and heat and passion he hoped he could give her.
I’m in so much trouble here, there aren’t any words.
“What do I think of you?” He breathed her scent like a drug. “That’s a big question, beautiful.”
Her hand moved into his hair like she was sampling him, getting a basic feel for everything about him—or trying to see if her stray dog might bite her after all. “We got off to a strange start, John, more intimate than sex in some ways, so I think it’s important for us to get rid of myths and fantasies and start dealing with reality.”
It was taking all he had not to get lost in her touch. So slight, but so powerful. “Do you ever waste any words?”
“No. I don’t.” She gave his hair a soft tug. “As a rule, no fire Sibyl does. If talking and communicating scare you to death, you might as well walk away now.”
How could such a tiny little package carry such a big punch? “That sounded like a challenge.”
Another smile. Another tug on his hair. She had to be trying to kill him.
“Definitely,” she said.
“I don’t walk away from challenges.” He held her gaze. “Ever.”
“We’ll see.”
John knew he had a question to answer, so he answered it without censoring himself, letting the words come as they would. “I think you’re perfect—but not in some idealistic way. I think you might be perfect for me.”
Her gaze didn’t waiver, but her lips parted, and he could almost taste her tongue in his mouth.
“I think you’re beautiful,” he said, more a hoarse whisper than anything, because he was so far gone. “That’s no secret. I think you’re honest and direct and kind-hearted, and smarter than most people even know. Brilliant, even. I also think you’re wounded and unsure of yourself, and stronger than you know.”
Camille looked disconcerted, like he might have surprised her. Finally. Well, good, because he’d surprised himself, getting all of that out. He wasn’t sure he’d strung that many sentences together in a personal situation for what, years? Ever?
Her parted lips finally started moving, at least enough to say, “Was that an audition?”
“It’s the truth. It’s what I think so far, but I want to find out a lot more. I want to know everything about you. I want to know every taste. Every scent. Every whisper-soft inch of your skin. I want to lose myself in you.”
Her cheeks colored the prettiest red, making her freckles stand out and beg to be kissed.
“What do you want, Camille?”
“I don’t know,” she said, but her eyes had gone misty and wide, and he wanted his mouth on hers so badly he felt the fire in his chest, his fingers, his arms, just like she’d used her elemental energy to burn him. “Not yet. But I plan to figure it out. And figure you out.”
John cleared his throat, mostly to test his voice. “Fair enough.”
She moved her hand away from his face, and John wanted to catch her fingers and kiss them just to keep the contact.
“I feel like I’m responsible for all this,” she said. Her fingers drifted to the already scarred-over gash in his side, the one made by Maggie Cregan’s sword. “And this. For everything. For you still being here and having this body. Do you resent that?”
“Absolutely not. You didn’t do it on purpose—and I wouldn’t resent it even if you did. I got new skin and a fresh chance, Strada’s out of commission, and I can help wipe out the Rakshasa. Everybody wins.”
This time he got a frown instead of a smile, and he had a sense they were finally getting to the center of what was most on her mind. His gut tightened on instinct, because whatever this was, he’d better have the right answer, or this beautiful thing might die before it ever had a chance to bloom.
“And what happens after that, John?”
The tension in his gut got worse. “After what?”
“After all the Rakshasa are dead.” Camille’s gaze turned piercing, and John wondered if she could use her pyrosentience without him knowing it. “After your war is finally over. What then?”
John thought his gut might split in two. He hadn’t expected that question, not even a little bit. “After,” he echoed, because he had considered that, and he vaguely remembered that his plan had been to kill all the demons, then off himself and take Strada with him into the great beyond for good and all.
Then he’d spent time around Camille, and now …
Now that seemed like a pretty shitty plan.
But after?
Could he even believe there would be an after? A time when he wasn’t at war?
“Don’t even pretend you know what you’re going to do, or what you’ll want when this is over. You have no idea what after’s going to look like, because you’ve been at war forever.” She moved closer to him, so close that he really felt her heat now, sensed her fire, and wanted every spark and flame. “I’m saying that because I know. I understand. What I think about you—I think you’re a good soldier and a good man with no idea what life is like outside of a firefight. We’re not so different in how we’ve lived, or how we’ll have to live.”
The softness in her voice and eyes unwound him inside and left him without anything to say at all. John swallowed, trying to regroup, trying to take in the truth that she really did understand, that she and her fellow Sibyls had known endless battles, endless wars. They were always fighting, always watching their backs.
He had just charged in among them, doing his thing, intent on his mission of protecting her and killing demons in the meantime, because—what? He thought Camille and her quad needed him?
They were happy to have his help, but they didn’t need him.
He had no idea what to do with that.
She had gotten to the heart of his life—of him and the biggest part of his attitude toward life—that fast, and it made him feel disoriented and uncertain.
John didn’t do uncertain.
He looked away from her, and when he looked back, she leaned over and pressed her lips against his.
The jolt of touching her almost sucked his self-control to nothing. He gripped her forearm, holding on as he tasted her lips, her tongue, as he felt the soft brush of her breath across his face. Every muscle in his body strained to get closer to her, but he made himself be still, made himself take what she offered. Her skin heated his palm, his fingers. She still smelled like lilies, now with a dash of silk sheets.
Camille found his hand with hers and moved i
t off her arm, over, over until his palm brushed her hard nipple. Shock fired from his fingers straight to his cock. Back and forth she moved his hand, letting him feel her through that barely there silk shirt.
Then she let him go and he cupped her breast, squeezing as she moaned into his mouth, kissing and pulling back.
“I have to touch you,” he murmured, touching her lips with his as he spoke. “I have to feel you.”
She didn’t stop him when he slid his hand down to her waist, then up, inside the pajama top until he was caressing her breast, pinching the soft, pebbled nub, again, again—damn, she was just watching his fingers move on her nipple, lips parted, eyes heavy, and that turned him on beyond belief. Her whisper-sigh of pleasure made him harder even though he hadn’t thought that was possible.
A second later, she had him, gripping him through the sheets, stroking his whole length.
“You’re going to feel so good,” she murmured as he tried to keep his sanity and not blow everything like a kid on his first date. She squeezed his erection as he rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, one then the other, and this time, they both groaned into the kiss. He didn’t want it to end, didn’t want her to move away from him, let him go, let his hand slip from under her shirt. He wanted to keep going even though he already felt her pulling away.
He turned her loose, but he kept looking at her, watching as she stood and gave him a full, mouth-watering view of her bare legs and the curve of her hip in those short silk pajamas. Not teasing, not in a bad way, not on purpose, just taking it all in pieces, going slow and sane. He knew that, even if he wanted to be insane. Her nipples made hard knots against the soft-looking white fabric of her pajama top. They’d be hard in his mouth, too, and he’d use his tongue to make her moan until she didn’t think she could take another second. Maybe she’d catch them both on fire. Maybe they’d burn up the bed, the room, the house—John really didn’t care.
“You’re going to be trouble, aren’t you?” Her voice was so quiet and low he could hear her needing him, and he wanted to fill her up, fill her up here, now, until he convinced her she could never have enough.
